Friday letters: Planned Parenthood, Martin Shkreli, oil production

Former Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli leaves court in New York, Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2016. Shkreli, who has become the poster child of pharmaceutical-industry greed after hiking the price of an anti-infection drug by more than 5,000 percent, is scheduled to appear at a congressional hearing on Thursday. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Photo: Seth Wenig, STF

Restore funding, kill label

Regarding "Twisted fate: Facts led DA's Planned Parenthood probe, now fairness should lead state officials" (Page B8, Jan. 28), now that the grand jury has found no wrongdoing by Planned Parenthood, it's time for Texas Republican legislators and executive branch to demonstrate their support for law and order by restoring funding to Planned Parenthood and put the "war on women" label to bed.

Patricia Roberts, Bellaire

Public health strategy

Regarding "Public health method to stop gun violence" (Page B9, Wednesday), the article compared methods that have vastly improved safety for motorists by targeting cars, roads and drivers with what could be done using the same multi-pronged approach to reduce gun violence. Efforts like the Brady Law itself and efforts to close its loopholes are aimed at keeping firearms out of the hands of people who can misuse them and cause tragic results.

The authors advocate going further with prevention and gathering more data to improve it. While this is indeed worthwhile, common sense tells us that applying technology that is readily available to make the firearm "accident proof" should begin now.

By using biometric methods, e.g. fingerprint recognition of the registered owner, no one else could fire the gun. If found by a child, like the 4-year-old who killed himself recently, it would be harmless. If stolen by burglars, it would be useless.

Bill Donovan, Montgomery

Bottom line focus

Regarding "'Handsome' profit foreseen in big drug price increase" (Page D5, Wednesday), former Turing CEO Martin Shkreli has become the poster boy for what is wrong with America's health care system. It will be interesting to listen to the free market advocates try to defend Shkreli and explain why his actions are good for the country.

The sad part is that Shkreli's actions are legal and he could have increased the pricing more. The problem for Shkreli and the rest of the pharmaceutical industry is that he got caught and now has to explain the price increases to Congress.

Unlike the price of oil, prices for pharmaceuticals are not set by the free market; they are set by people in the pharmaceutical industry whose job is to make as much money as they can for their companies and their investors. These excessive price increases directly affect the sick, but are ultimately passed on to the rest us in the form of higher health insurance premiums.

That is why our government needs to learn from the Canadians and the Europeans and become more actively involved in establishing pricing for drugs in America.

Bill Meyer, Kingwood

A need for health care

Regarding "Families losing kind of care they need as insurers narrow plans" (Page A1, Jan. 24), the story is a damning indictment to us all as a free and democratic society. I sincerely hope that the Faught family's story -and the countless others like them - will motivate more and more Texans to demand a better response from our politicians than simply, "Repeal Obamacare."

Justin R. Teague, Klein

Oil production

Regarding "Oil imports" editorial (Page B11, Sunday), first of all, by far the most important reason for current low crude oil prices is because the U.S. has put a lot of excess oil on the world market, for which we can't blame OPEC or other producers. We have seen the enemy, and it's us!

For an energy economist to call for oil import tariffs or quotas, demonstrates unfamiliarity about world oil markets. If the U.S. was to implement import barriers, producers would just sell to other countries. Do we really want to go back to long gas lines like during the 1970s?

The idea that oil producers are dumping their products is rather farfetched. As anybody with access to the Internet can check, quite a few of the largest fields can produce crude oil at less than $10-20 per barrel.